OnlyFans — the massive adult creator network where performers and influencers sell subscription-based content directly to fans — is considering selling a majority stake of its business to investment firm Architect Capital, a source close to the deal told TechCrunch. The deal would value the platform at $5.5 billion. The source said that of that $5.5 billion, $3.5 billion would be equity and $2 billion would be debt. Under those terms, Architect would assume a 60% stake in the business. The two parties are in exclusivity, meaning that OnlyFans is barred from negotiating with other potential buyers for a set…

Kofi Ampadu, the partner at a16z who led the firm’s Talent x Opportunity (TxO) fund and program, has left the firm, according to an email he sent to staff that TechCrunch obtained. This comes months after the firm paused TxO and laid off most of its staff. “During my time at the firm, I was deeply grateful for the opportunity and the trust to lead this work,” Ampadu wrote in the email, sent Friday afternoon, with the subject line “Closing My a16z Chapter.” “Identifying out-of-network entrepreneurs and supporting them as they sharpened their ideas, raised capital, and grew into confident…

From the street, the only indication I’ve found Physical Intelligence’s headquarters in San Francisco is a pi symbol that’s a slightly different color than the rest of the door. When I walk in, I’m immediately confronted with activity. There’s no reception desk, no gleaming logo in fluorescent lights. Inside, the space is a giant concrete box made slightly less austere by a haphazard sprawl of long blonde-wood tables. Some are clearly meant for lunch, dotted with Girl Scout cookie boxes, jars of Vegemite (someone here is Australian), and small wire baskets stuffed with one too many condiments. The rest of…

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin is pausing its space tourism flights for “no less than two years” in order to focus all of its resources on upcoming missions to the moon, the company announced Friday. The decision puts a temporary halt on a program that Blue Origin has been using to fly humans past the Kármán line, the recognized boundary of space, for the last five years. Blue Origin made the announcement just a few weeks ahead of the expected third launch of its New Glenn mega-rocket, which is slated for late February. The company had previously suggested it…

A confidential informant told the FBI in 2017 that Jeffrey Epstein had a “personal hacker,” according to a document released by the Department of Justice on Friday. The document, which was released as part of the Justice Department’s legally required effort to publish documents related to its investigation into the late sex offender, does not identify who the alleged hacker was, but does include several details about them.  According to the informant, the hacker was an Italian born in the southern region of Calabria and specialized in finding vulnerabilities in iOS, BlackBerry devices, and the Firefox browser.  The hacker allegedly…

Instagram is developing a feature that will allow users to remove themselves from someone’s “Close Friends” list, Meta told TechCrunch on Friday. The company says the feature is still in the early stages and is not being tested publicly yet. The social network’s Close Friends feature lets users share Stories, Reels, and posts with a select group of people, rather than their entire follower base. Since the feature’s launch in 2018, users haven’t been able to remove themselves from someone else’s Close Friends list. The internal prototype was first spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, who specializes in finding unreleased…

SpaceX is reportedly lining up four major Wall Street banks for a potential 2026 IPO — a move that could signal the long-awaited reopening of the public markets after a years-long IPO drought. In the meantime, late-stage private companies like SpaceX are finding other ways to create liquidity for employees and early shareholders, largely through a fast-growing secondary market. To unpack what SpaceX’s IPO chatter means, how private liquidity works before a debut, and what investors are looking for in today’s pre-IPO giants, we spoke with Greg Martin, managing director at Rainmaker Securities, a broker-dealer specializing in secondary share transactions…

Earlier this month, Anthropic launched Cowork, a new agentic tool designed to take the benefits of its AI coding assistant Claude Code and transform it into a more general-use tool that non-coders could benefit from. Now Anthropic has launched a new feature within Cowork to make it even more powerful for enterprise users. Behold, the plug-in. The idea behind plug-ins is simple: They are designed to automate “specialized” tasks within a company’s various departments. Whether that function is drafting content for the marketing department, reviewing risks in documents for a firm’s legal team, or drafting responses for customer support, the plug-in…

Bluesky released its first transparency report this week documenting the actions taken by its Trust & Safety team and the results of other initiatives, like age-assurance compliance, monitoring of influence operations, automated labeling, and more. The social media startup — a rival to X and Threads — grew nearly 60% in 2025, from 25.9 million users to 41.2 million, which includes accounts hosted both on Bluesky’s own infrastructure and those running their own infrastructure as part of the decentralized social network based on Bluesky’s AT Protocol. During the past year, users made 1.41 billion posts on the platform, which represented 61%…

This is it. The clock is running out. With demand surging and early inventory nearly gone, tonight is your last chance to lock in record-low pricing for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 and secure a +1 pass at 50% off while limited passes remain. If Disrupt has been on your must-attend list, now is the moment to act. Save up to $680 on your pass and bring a +1 for half the price before this offer disappears. This pricing ends tonight, January 30, at 11:59 p.m. PT, or the moment the last +1 pass sell out. No extensions. No exception. Register now to secure yours with the lowest-priced offer. What Disrupt delivers year after year…